Had I been saying his name out loud?
I looked at him where we sat together on my bed. He was so beautiful. That had always been true. But as we’d grown older, only a few short years from being given as more than entertainment to Pharaoh and those others he offered us to, it had become clear to me that I wanted Nakht as my own.
I loved him. We had been friends for so long now, but I had finally admitted to myself that I felt more, I wanted more, and I had been drumming up the courage to tell him for weeks. Tokisshim and confess everything.
I remembered now. That was why I had asked him in here. I was going to tell him, to blurt it all out finally, come what may afterward. Then,now, just as I was about to do it…
Nakht kissed me.
I gasped. I had never been kissed before. I had never wanted anyone to kiss me. It was just a simple press of lips, and most of our peers could be found dallying in corners whenever they had a spare moment lately, but I had wanted to save it for someone whose lips I truly yearned for. Not just to satiate arousal, but for all of that want to center around a single person who wanted me just as much in return.
Now Nakht’s lips were on mine, and I wanted nothing more than to draw him closer, to cling and claw and pull him in against me until we were one.
His tentative tongue told me this was his first kiss too. How unhurried he was, exploring, and sinking into my desperate clutching. I forgot to breathe, and just when I needed to gasp away, Nakht did so first, pausing for air that reminded me to take a breath too, before he returned to kiss me deeper, knocking me prone upon the pillows.
I must have twitched against his thigh because Nakht bucked into me, just as tellingly feverish, but then lurched upright with the darkest crimson in his cheeks I had ever seen.
“Sorry! I’ve just… really been wanting to do that.”
He looked even more beautiful to me now, bent over me, embarrassed and flushed. I wanted to lick back between his wetted lips. “Even after I burned you?” I asked.
“Burned me?” His brow crinkled.
No. That wasn’t right. That hadn’t happened.
Not yet.
“Never mind,” I said and pulled Nakht down to kiss him again, just for a little while, allowing myself to enjoy this memory.
The fog of my thoughts was clearing. I wasn’t the young whelp I appeared to be. I had grown beyond these years long ago. It seemed clarity was coming to me faster each time, and I knew Nakht was watching. The real Nakht. I could feel him. Sense him. But I knew I couldn’t reach him. I was reliving a life that was over, and my beloved was doing everything in his power—including facing the gods in all their wondrous brilliance—to win me back.
I continued to kiss the Nakht from my past, enjoying our beginning that I knew would quickly escalate and bind us together forever. As I did, I reached out toward where I sensed the Nakht from my present and thought that this time, I felt the brush of his fingers against mine before my journey into the past swept me into the light again.
NAKHT
“No!”
I was so close. Soclose.
I had felt Meryt, our fingertips grazing each other’s in a desperate grasp. I knew I had to be patient, to keep persevering through these trials, but how could I endure when they kept showing him to me, almost but never quite close enough to keep?
But I had touched him this time. I had.
“Move, you fool!”
I blinked, remembering where I had been before witnessing Meryt’s memory—on Ra’s night boat with Apophis about to eat me!
I rolled like before, just as narrowly escaping another piercing of the giant snake’s fangs. They once again buried deep into Ra’s daybed as I managed to scramble away onto the deck of the boat.
We were docked, or at least as much as a floating boat could dock, unmoving against a cliffside that veered around a bend to somewhere unseen, much like when Ra had first appeared to me. Here there was an entrance off the boat, a large archway into the rockface with torchlight illuminating a corridor inside, though what else lay beyond, I couldn’t quite see. It didn’t match the tomb entrances from earlier but seemed more crudely carved.
Where was Ra? That had not been his voice that spoke.
“Move! Get inside! Now!”
I looked up, for this time, the voice had sounded from above me.
An acrobatic figure vaulted through the air, wielding a spear. He was magnificent, almost floating as he descended upon Apophis. He wore even more elaborate armor than Ra had, fittingly, as he was playing the role of warrior, and Ra need only protect himself ifSethfailed.
